M Squad: Guilty Alibi (1958)
Season 1, Episode 31
9/10
A Hard Case For 'Det. Ballinger' To Solve
3 May 2010
Wow, what a bad day for the "Fanning Company." First, the vice president gets arrested on a hit-and-run charge and then on the same night the company's president is found shot to death in his home. Are the two related?

What really puts an interesting twist on this story is that the hit-and-run driver comes into the police station to give himself up....but the victim, who is near dead, "tells" Frank at the hospital that a woman ran her over! What the heck is going on? There is an answer, and it's interesting one. A key witness to what transpired is an old-lady mentally-gone (except for her memory) snoop who spends the whole day with binocular staring out her window.

This turns out to be an extremely hard case for "Det. Frank Ballinger" (Lee Marvin) to solve, because of conflicting witness accounts and motives, but he gets through it and it's fun to see the truth slowly unravel.

Meg Wylie is good as the "Mrs. Timmons," the "peeping Tom" as are several other actors, a few with New York City accents. It's amazing how many times you hear that even though the setting is the Midwest or out on the range in 1950s westerns! (Many of the early TV actors were New Yorkers).
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